Well, I just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Do not read further unless you want to be spoiled.
Back in April I posted how my Mother, Sister and I had each made a list of three people we thought would probably include the two people J.K. Rowling said would die:
Having talked with BriGal, a friend from #userfriendly on Undernet, I realized that we three interpreted things wrong. It wasn't two deaths that were going t happen, it was deaths = 2 + N, with the plus N being Voldemort (obviously) and the N - 1 not quite so important people who died as well. All in all, over seventy characters die in the book, with 20 of them named specifically along with an unnamed family of Muggles, a bunch of Gringotts goblins and 51 unnamed others dying in the defence of Hogwarts against Voldemort's army.
My Mom – guessing Ron Weasley or Hermione Granger, Professor McGonagall, and Draco or Lucius Malfoy – didn't get any right.
Janelle - – guessing Voldemort, Percy and a member of the Order of the Phoenix – got two right, though I think that Voldemort dying was a gimme and since the OotP were the good guy warriors and one of them dying was pretty likely.
Me, I guessed Draco, Molly or Arthur Weasley and Professor Snape, so I got one right. I guess I';ll have to eat my words about Snape not truly being Dumbledore's agent, as it turns out that Dumbledore intended Snape to kill him.
There were a few things I would have liked to see in this book, like more of Neville, Ginny and others from Hogwarts, but Harry, Ron & Hermione were on the lam for most of the book so I can see how that wasn't possible. Rowling's writing style doesn't really seem to have secondary side plots, so characters not directly involved tend to get left out. Also, even though Ron was supposed to be affected by wearing the real locket, I though his estrangement from Ron and Hermione to be a bit forced and his return had a tinge of deus ex machina to it, but it's not the first time for that in the Potter-verse and nor is it the only time in this book, what with Dobby appearing out of nowhere at the Malfoy's.
All in all, I give this book a 4 out of 5, and the postscript at the end, Nineteen Years Later, makes me wish there were other books ahead.
The people you talk about can read your blog, you know. I don't know which irritates me more--that you so slyly insult me via my choices b/c they were too obvious or that you conveniently do not acknowledge the predictability of your own choices, notably that Arthur/Molly are also members of OOTP (therefore falling under the same "good guy warriors" theory) and Snape's death was commonly predicted by Potter fans (therefore almost as much of a "gimme" as Voldemort). Also, we allowed ourselves 3 choices so we could purposefully pick obvious ones--Voldemort included. We knew at the time of making our choices that the deaths referred to Voldemort + 2, and I picked Voldemort to be sure to get at least one right--and explicitly stated this at the time. If you're going to put other people down to make yourself look better, do so in a forum where they don't find out.
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